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As you can imagine, we didn't wake up feeling too bright and fresh this morning and Leander was in a pretty bad way. So we stayed around the campsite a while and had a big breakfast of bacon and egg sandwiched as I told Leander that it was the best English cure for a hangover and although it looked like he didn’t believe me at first, I think it worked.
We polished off the remaining orange juice (without the vodka!) and then we decided to give Daniel (who we had all met at Magnums in Airlie Beach) a call. I first spoke to him to double check to see if his offer of meeting up and staying over at his house for a couple of nights was still OK and it was, great! free accommodation for a couple of nights and then I passed the phone over to Leander so that they could have a chat and also say goodbye as they never got to see him before he left that morning.
Before we set off it was time to top up the engine with oil as I had been ignoring the orange oil warning light on the dash board for a couple of days. Strangely the engine was under the seats in the front cab, but it was quite an easy job to get to the engine and pour in a litre of oil that I had bought a couple of days ago at a petrol station. Hopefully I wouldn’t break the engine in the van now especially as I have recently had a habit of breaking engines.
We both drove down to Brisbane in our little convoy again as we did yesterday and once in the city we found some pay and display parking along one of the back roads as the couple of multi-storey car parks that we tried, none of them were high enough to get our vans in through the barriers.
Just as we started walking around the city centre I got a text message from Doreen saying that she had left Noosa this morning and was on the bus heading for Brisbane and did I want to meet up with her. I didn’t reply back to her straight away as I was planning to meet up with Colin Seery, who I had met in Cambodia and said to look him up once I get to Brisbane and was waiting to hear back from Colin first for our plans for the evening.
The three of us did the usual walk around the city and see some of the sights and although we didn’t do much the weather was nice and we had a walk around the city centre and along the river down to their big wheel. Once our time was up on out pay and display we headed back to the vans, where I gave Colin a call to arrange the evening and also to ask him if he knew where we could park up the two vans for the night.
Colin told me that we could park the van up on the road just close to his house and said that he could show us where to go. So I headed to Colin’s work and picked him up outside and he came with us to show us where to park. I save the GPS position and left Leander and Debbie parked up at the road and then headed back into the city to drop Colin off at work and arranged to meet up with him later on in the evening after his late meeting with some clients.
Now that we had sorted out our sleeping arrangements for the night I gave Doreen a text back to say that she could come and join us if she wanted but by this time she was already on another bus heading down to Byron Bay. She rang me back saying that she had only just got on the bus about 5 minutes ago and if I had been 6 minutes earlier with my text she would have come out with us for the night. Oh well, sorry Doreen. I’ll be in Byron Bay tomorrow, maybe we will meet again.
The three of us got changed and headed down to the river where we caught a ferry down to the city centre. As tonight was going to be our last night in Australia together as Leander and Debbie had a flight to Sydney tomorrow we went out and had a nice dinner together as we had planned and then called Colin to see where he was. He was still with his clients and could come to join us yet, so he gave us directions to a backpacker’s bar where the drinks were cheap and he would meet us there later.
In the end we must have waited about 2 hours for Colin to come and join us in the bar and as soon as he got here, Debbie and Leander who were tired from last night decided to leave us alone to catch up and headed back to their van. Colin and I had a few drink and he got talking to this girl that we had been watching playing all the men for drinks. She was flirting with them and getting a drink of him and then moved on to the next one and did the same again.
Colin was talking with her and although she had told him earlier that she was epileptic we were not expecting what happened next. All of a sudden she fell from the stool that she was sitting on and Colin didn’t quite have time to catch her properly as she fell, but she started having an epileptic fit in the bar. We managed to clear the floor around her and let her continue fitting while someone went a got a bouncer for help. The bouncer came and managed to get most of the people who were now watching and even stepping over her to get to the bar, moved out of her away and once she stopped fitting, he carried her out of the bar to a private room where they waited for an ambulance to turn up. As the girl was in the bar alone Colin decided to go to the hospital with her to make sure she was OK and not left alone and I grabbed a taxi and headed back to my van.
What an evening this turned out to be.
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